the insomnia factor
Insomnia does strange things to the brain. The early hours of the morning can fly by at times; before I know it the entire night has flown by and it's six in the morning. Sometimes. Other times the night crawls by & the wee hours barely bother moving on trapping the sufferer in an external exoskeletal of pain, weariness & superhuman suffering. For some reason known only to God and a handful of scientists sworn to secrecy insomnia actually doesn't kill you. Just forces you to find random links such as this, this, and this. The point I'm trying to make or believe myself is that insomnia is in actual fact a virtual form of madness which isn't necessarily cured by sleep just as the experience of taking hard drugs isn't necessarily cured by not taking any more, or staying sober. And, as I'm sure we're very aware that all three of the above subjects; insomnia, drugs and 'madness' are all more or less inter-related when it comes to literature. Taking a broad view of craziness related issues myself I generally & wholeheartedly believe that to be on the fringes of society is madness. Simply put: why would you do that to yourself? Why stay on the outside when you know it's going to cause you so much bother? Why stay different in a world that will attempt to grind you down should it be determined that you are "different"?
Well, this brings me neatly to the first book I want to write about. The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut. Mark has just written the introduction to his father's latest book Armageddon in Retrospect which has been posthumously published. The Eden Express was first published in 1975 was out of print for years and picked up again by Seven Stories Press in 2002. It's a non-fiction book about his dealings with schizophrenia; the title comes from his trying to unite the Outer and the Inner life so he can reach Eden while living in a Hippie commune in British Columbia. Schizophrenia brought him to it in record time. Mark is remarkably well-written both in his introduction to his father's work and his own memoir of schizophrenia. One of my favourite quotes from the Introduction is: "Anyone who thinks that Kurt's jokes or essays came easily or were written off the cuff hasn't tried to write." Eden Express itself is well-written with thoughtful and unpretentious prose. He attests his recovery to megavitamin therapy and the book is full of useful information on schizophrenia which, even if the reader is not directly or infirectly affected by the malady, makes for comforting reading at that hour of the morning when your limbs are encased in sleep but you're still awake surfing the web. There's a particular sensitivity and rounded knowledge that he brings to his writing that doesn't always exist when the offspring of famous writers tend to take to the same craft. Fittingly enough Mark Vonnegut, who was named for Mark Twain, is a pediatrician which adds just the finishing sheen to the poetry of the relationship between father and son.
Moving swiftly along- the blue sky shines through my window every morning. How is it that in this city the very early morning is often spectacular to see whereas the rest of the day is usually grim and grey?
Ooh, this is a nice one. Certainly Orwell's strangest book. The Clergyman's Daughter. Dorothy Hare is devoted to her father, the titular clergyman. She looks after her patrician father and her household chores are all timed to the minute. The central theme is one of modern slavery, how various systems of control insinuate themselves into modern life. Dorothy's position within the parish is undoubtedly not of the lowest order yet her life is miserable. Here's the catch though: She is seen by the parish gossip kissing the most disreputable man in town, a certain Mr. Warburton, goes home to make costumes for a kids pageant or play and while the glue is melting on the stove, the heavy smell dulling her senses and kettle whistling, she falls asleep only to wake up on a beach having lost all memory of who she is. An event which remains both unquestioned and unexplained throughout the entire book! Now here's the thing, Orwell later repudiated the book dismissing it as tripe. Personally it's my favourite Orwell. Orwell was not a beautiful writer, he was a journo. He waged war on the cliché demanding that all clichés be henceforth dropped from the English language. Cliché was a 'tired worn boot' that needed to be cast off, which only went to prove that it is practically impossible to talk about clicés without using clichés. He was not an admirer of the aesthetically beautiful but an exposer of the intrisically socially ugly. 1984 is a big ol' brute of a book, painful to read in every way, which establishes O as being the English version of Dostoevsky, or, in other words, prepared to bludgeon the reader with meaning until, bloody and fainting, the reader submits that salvation is only possible through sweat, blood & tears. Dorothy works picking hops, is a beggar on Trafalgar Square finely portrayed through play format which suits the chaos of the action and she goes to teach in a school where she is immediately beset upon by the despicable mistress. I'll never forget Miss Strong, Dorothy's predessor whose legacy is empty bottles stashed around Dorothy's room. The whole work ends with Dorothy ending back in the parish at the kitchen table, glue melting on the stove &c. What I love about this book is that Dorothy is not by nature a bitter person, neither do her experiences change her for the worst. At times she is desperate for money, company and the recognition of society but her lifelong experience of being a subject at the hands of her father has made her naive. Each new situation that she finds herself in she accustoms herself to as a child not knowing anything better. Her helplessness is entirely in the mind of the reader and Dorothy's grace is entirely indebted to the fact that she always has been a slave. Perhaps Orwell disowned the book as it is one of few indications he actually had a creative imagination. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect Orwell in the same way I do Dostoevsky, but he called the shots as he saw them and his books are identifiable as being part of his life in a way that it is possible to set out chunks of his life through the representation of them in his books. In this way Dorothy is the black sheep of Orwell's lifelong oeuvre and that suits her & me just fine and dandy.
I'm going to eat soft-boiled eggs and marmite soldiers.
Well, this brings me neatly to the first book I want to write about. The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut. Mark has just written the introduction to his father's latest book Armageddon in Retrospect which has been posthumously published. The Eden Express was first published in 1975 was out of print for years and picked up again by Seven Stories Press in 2002. It's a non-fiction book about his dealings with schizophrenia; the title comes from his trying to unite the Outer and the Inner life so he can reach Eden while living in a Hippie commune in British Columbia. Schizophrenia brought him to it in record time. Mark is remarkably well-written both in his introduction to his father's work and his own memoir of schizophrenia. One of my favourite quotes from the Introduction is: "Anyone who thinks that Kurt's jokes or essays came easily or were written off the cuff hasn't tried to write." Eden Express itself is well-written with thoughtful and unpretentious prose. He attests his recovery to megavitamin therapy and the book is full of useful information on schizophrenia which, even if the reader is not directly or infirectly affected by the malady, makes for comforting reading at that hour of the morning when your limbs are encased in sleep but you're still awake surfing the web. There's a particular sensitivity and rounded knowledge that he brings to his writing that doesn't always exist when the offspring of famous writers tend to take to the same craft. Fittingly enough Mark Vonnegut, who was named for Mark Twain, is a pediatrician which adds just the finishing sheen to the poetry of the relationship between father and son.
Moving swiftly along- the blue sky shines through my window every morning. How is it that in this city the very early morning is often spectacular to see whereas the rest of the day is usually grim and grey?
Ooh, this is a nice one. Certainly Orwell's strangest book. The Clergyman's Daughter. Dorothy Hare is devoted to her father, the titular clergyman. She looks after her patrician father and her household chores are all timed to the minute. The central theme is one of modern slavery, how various systems of control insinuate themselves into modern life. Dorothy's position within the parish is undoubtedly not of the lowest order yet her life is miserable. Here's the catch though: She is seen by the parish gossip kissing the most disreputable man in town, a certain Mr. Warburton, goes home to make costumes for a kids pageant or play and while the glue is melting on the stove, the heavy smell dulling her senses and kettle whistling, she falls asleep only to wake up on a beach having lost all memory of who she is. An event which remains both unquestioned and unexplained throughout the entire book! Now here's the thing, Orwell later repudiated the book dismissing it as tripe. Personally it's my favourite Orwell. Orwell was not a beautiful writer, he was a journo. He waged war on the cliché demanding that all clichés be henceforth dropped from the English language. Cliché was a 'tired worn boot' that needed to be cast off, which only went to prove that it is practically impossible to talk about clicés without using clichés. He was not an admirer of the aesthetically beautiful but an exposer of the intrisically socially ugly. 1984 is a big ol' brute of a book, painful to read in every way, which establishes O as being the English version of Dostoevsky, or, in other words, prepared to bludgeon the reader with meaning until, bloody and fainting, the reader submits that salvation is only possible through sweat, blood & tears. Dorothy works picking hops, is a beggar on Trafalgar Square finely portrayed through play format which suits the chaos of the action and she goes to teach in a school where she is immediately beset upon by the despicable mistress. I'll never forget Miss Strong, Dorothy's predessor whose legacy is empty bottles stashed around Dorothy's room. The whole work ends with Dorothy ending back in the parish at the kitchen table, glue melting on the stove &c. What I love about this book is that Dorothy is not by nature a bitter person, neither do her experiences change her for the worst. At times she is desperate for money, company and the recognition of society but her lifelong experience of being a subject at the hands of her father has made her naive. Each new situation that she finds herself in she accustoms herself to as a child not knowing anything better. Her helplessness is entirely in the mind of the reader and Dorothy's grace is entirely indebted to the fact that she always has been a slave. Perhaps Orwell disowned the book as it is one of few indications he actually had a creative imagination. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect Orwell in the same way I do Dostoevsky, but he called the shots as he saw them and his books are identifiable as being part of his life in a way that it is possible to set out chunks of his life through the representation of them in his books. In this way Dorothy is the black sheep of Orwell's lifelong oeuvre and that suits her & me just fine and dandy.
I'm going to eat soft-boiled eggs and marmite soldiers.
